Category: Words from Tristan

Posted on by

To Serve or be Served

cereal on a spoon

“Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” John Kennedy

“No individual has any right to come into the world and go out of it without leaving behind him/her distinct and legitimate reasons for having passed through it.” George Washington Carver

“We are going to need a whole bunch of healthy people to take care of the young, old and in between for the foreseeable future.” Tristan Klesick

I really don’t belong in this list of quotes, but my heart is heavy. I have this foreboding sense that America and the rest of civilization is heading for a preventable health catastrophe. I know that I am writing this newsletter to a healthier group, AKA Klesick’s customers.

Just last week, I saw a headline that said, “cereal manufacturers are going to sweeten their products to increase sales.” The nexus of Calories and Capitalism is the root cause of much of it, coupled with the low nutritional value and a desire for cheap food–WHAM! Add to that recipe a more sedentary lifestyle (double WHAMMY) and you have the making of a preventable health catastrophe.

Health is a complicated issue and It is hard to simplify the current health crisis. But food would be a logical starting point to reverse this frightening health trend. Can diet have an impact? Can eating less sugar and fat and salt have an impact? Can drinking more water and less coffee, soda, alcohol have an impact? Can eating more vegetables and fruit have an impact? Can just eating less have an impact? The Answer to these rhetorical questions is a resounding YES!

Can we wait for DC to implement a better food policy? Can we wait for the Grocery Manufacturers of America to produce healthier products? Can we expect Lobbyist to not help elect legislator’s that support the status quo? The answer to these rhetorical questions is a resounding NO!

Thankfully, as you also know, just adding one more serving of vegetables and fruit per day will do wonders for most Americans and adding two or three more servings per day would downgrade our national health crisis to a health issue.

When John Kennedy was posing the quote above to America he was not thinking about Health and probably neither was George Washington Carver. But today, continuing to make better food choices is critical for our own personal health and our families health. But I would also contend that remaining as healthy as long as possible will be critical for the foreseeable future, so those that are healthy and have made healthy choices can serve as long as possible.

I want to be one of the ones who is healthy enough to serve for as long as possible!

 

Tristan Klesick

Farmer, Community Health Advocate

 

Posted on by

Bloom Where You’re Planted

daffodils

This is where I live, this is where I serve, and this is where I have my greatest impact.

Have you ever heard “bloom where you are planted”? That makes great sense if you are a dandelion, or a rose, or a maple tree, or, or, or? Of course, the plant world gets it. They don’t really have a choice. They just bloom where they are planted.

So, unless someone uproots a plant and transplants it somewhere else, it will do the next thing on the to do list—grow and bloom. Oh, to be a plant. ?

But us? We have choices, oh so many choices. Most of us are pretty firmly rooted in our communities and unless something happens, we will wake up the next day and still be pretty firmly rooted in the same community. This means that today and tomorrow we have great opportunities to make the world a better place by just growing and blooming where we live.

Of course, there are different stages of life and things will shift, and if you find yourself transplanted, follow the plants lead. A transplanted plant needs time to reacclimate and reestablish. Often it will take a tree a year or more to regrow roots, which is why I as a farmer prune the top of the tree at the same time I transplant it. So, if you find yourself in a major move (location or life), I would encourage you to prune your schedule and grow some roots in your new community/phase of life and then look for opportunities to serve.

When I transplant annuals like lettuce, those plants will take a few weeks to get growing. That is akin to moving to a new home in the same community or maybe a life event that will take you out of action for a season. It would still be good to take a few weeks or month and prune your schedule to settle in. And, after a time of re-rooting, engage back in with your community/new community.

Solomon in the Bible shares that there is nothing new under the sun. I agree that many of the “new” principles or ideas or innovations are not new, but what is new is that a new person is thinking about how to do something through their own lenses and filters. I sincerely believe that everyone is uniquely created to make the places we live, work, and congregate better places. We all have the ability to leave our communities richer and better today and tomorrow. We just need to be OURSELVES and grow and bloom where we are planted.

 

Tristan

Farmer, Community Health Advocate

Posted on by

Doing Nothing is Not Doing Nothing

Doing nothing couldn’t be farther from the truth. If you are “doing nothing”, that means you are doing something but just consider it not as valuable as doing something. For sure, even when you think you are doing nothing, your mind and body are still doing something. And we can all be thankful for that! If it was up to us to remember to breathe or have our heart beat or make another 225 billion cells every day, there would be a whole lot less of us just doing nothing. (Wink)

I spend a lot of time volunteering in the Salmon/Farm and Food (In)Security arenas. I use the term arena, because a lot of this work is like an arena of old. The decisions that have been and are being made have long term impacts. “Doing Nothing” in these two arenas is still doing something. It is still a choice being made and the outcomes of those choices will have impacts on our environments—the places we play or grow our food or where the wild critters live. Or, if we continue to hand out food freely or choose to subsidize food or decide to implement a “work for food” model, all those choices will have impacts too.

Here is a prime example. The steel workers (150,000) of PA and OH are really excited that President Trump is slapping tariffs on steel and aluminum. The soybean farmers (300,000) are not excited because China might slap tariffs on their products. In this case doing nothing would continue to benefit the soybean farmers and farmers in general, but still depress our steel industry. Choices do have impacts. Ironically, if soybeans have a tariff slapped on them, those farmers will have to sell the food to more Americans. Food prices will then drop (ouch/YAY), but your car prices will go up (as if they could charge anymore for a car)!

Nothing happens in a vacuum and change is hard. Just because a policy is not changed doesn’t mean that everything is better. We are just deciding to do nothing different and choosing to get the same results. That might be fine, but that is not doing nothing.

There are lots of broken systems in America today. They were implemented to solve a need and that need was solved, but at the same time we also created a whole industry around serving that need. It became an entitlement with elected officials, government employees, lawyers, doctors, community activists, universities and private businesses all lining up to keep meeting that need. Pick the need: agricultural subsidies, welfare payments, disability, education subsidies, defense contracts, clean air and water, etc. As one legislator shared with me, “Every program has a constituent.” I would add that every time we support/create a new government program, we also create the opportunity for that program to live on and on and on.

Unfortunately, there is 17 trillion dollars of debt in America demanding that changes happen. I want to be out in front of those changes and be working on local solutions to national problems that exist locally here, and I am investing my time to do so. Because I am farmer, I have a unique platform to affect change in both the farm/salmon and food security arenas.

I hope it is not lost on you that when you buy a box of good for your family or for the food bank, you too are also saying yes to leaving this community a better place for the next generations, a place with livable communities, good jobs, fresh air and clean water. Supporting a local business and local farms is not doing nothing – IT IS DOING SOMETHING!

 

Together we are making a difference, a local difference.

 

Thank you,

 

Tristan Klesick

Your Farmer and Community Health Advocate

Posted on by

Thank You

I still remember the day that Joelle and I made the bold decision to offer home delivery of farm fresh produce and started delivering to those first 50 customers.  In some ways it seems like a lifetime ago and in other ways it seems just like yesterday! And we are always excited to see another local family sign up and make a decision to take charge of their health.

The American food system is broken and anything but healthy. Political and profit motivation have left Americans sicker and sicker with each new generation. Many Americans prefer a pill to solve their health/dietary issues, whether it be a prescription or vitamin. Slick advertising campaigns selling us more energy or added vitamin C, E, Calcium, blueberries, cherries, aronias etc. enticing us to buy their products. Like that will make all the added sugar or fat in their blueberry muffins healthy and good for us! Anyone ever make jam at home and think, “WOW! 4 cups of white sugar to 1 cup of fruit.” That is certainly good for the Sugar industry, marginally good for the blueberry farmer, but not so good for us. Sadly, that is how most of the food industry operates – best for the manufacturer, okay for the farmer and not so good for us.

For the last 20 years, Klesick has stood for real food, grown without chemicals that adds value to your life. It is not easy being a small business and it is certainly not easy being a farmer, but it is a privilege. It is a privilege growing, sourcing and delivering farm fresh organic fruits and vegetables directly to you, giving you an organic food choice that is fresher and healthier—fresher and healthier for you, your family and our planet.

For Joelle, myself and the Klesick team we want to extend a deep and heartfelt thank you for supporting our organic farm, organic farming and the organic food alternative. Together we, you and the Klesick team, are sending a strong message to the large multinational farms and food processors that we value local farms, we value local companies and we value nutrition rich food.

 

Together we are making a difference.

 

Tristan

 

Health Advocate and Farmer

 

 

 

 

 

Posted on by

Spring Is Here

Does anyone else have a little extra spring in their step? I know I do. The sunshine draws you outside and the increasing day length, WOW, what a gift that is! Every year many of the PNW folks wander around in a mental fog from November to February – and farmers are no different.

It always amazes me that I will be busy all winter and then as soon as the days start to lengthen and the weather starts to warm, “BAM!” It is as if I was Rip Vanwinkle. I get a deep breath, start to notice how the ground is drying out, the spring birds are making an appearance, the ladybugs and other insects that call this place home are flittering about. The whole farm awakens from its winter rest! Now it is time to farm, for the local season to begin.

On our local farm we are still a few weeks away from actively farming the soil. It is ironic, that I consider driving my tractor and getting the seed beds ready for planting as active farming?!?!?!

Haven’t I been farming all winter? I have planned our planting rotations and ordered seeds and moved and repaired the greenhouse (thank you wind and snow). I have purchased different equipment, sold other equipment and done maintenance on said equipment. Our family is seeding 800 lettuce transplants every week. We also have been pruning and have just landed 4 dump truck loads of compost.

Sounds like we have been actively farming all winter, but…. There is something about “turning” the soil for a vegetable farmer that signals it is time to farm. Working with nature, discerning when it is dry enough to help the soil get ready to grow food, to feed (fertilize) the soil so the soil will feed the plants, so the plants can grow.

My job as a farmer is to help the soil, enhance the soil and work with the soil. The soil’s job and its host of helpers (bacteria, fungi, earthworms, etc.) is to feed the plants. That is why I just landed 4 dump truck loads of compost to help feed the soil, so the soil can grow the plants as healthy as possible, so the farmer can harvest the healthiest plants and deliver them to you, so you can eat the healthiest plants.

This is why I farm -the eater, the farmer and the soil working together in a mutually beneficial and respectful partnership.

 

Cheers to your health,

 

Tristan

 

 

 

 

Posted on by

The Earth Does Matter

Suelo in Spanish, Sol in French, Suolo in Italian, Aferi in Ethiopia, Boden in German, Soil in English. Every country has it and everyone needs to care about it. The top 6 inches of the earth’s crust is where we get most of our nutrients to live. It is also the home to millions of microscopic bacteria and fungi and also the home to a host of insects, insect eaters, eaters of insect eaters, plant eaters and eaters of plant eaters. Everything starts with the soil, suelo, sol, suolo, aferi or boden. We have to protect it, nurture it, and feed it. Basically, we have to respect it.

For the last 20 years, Klesick Farms has done just that. We have never used synthetic chemicals on our fields and only supported farms that had the same passion. My friend Dave Hedlin tells a story that his mom would always share when anyone used the word “dirt” when referring to the soil.

“My mom worked with a soil scientist at Oregon State University in the 1940’s, and whenever one of his students would refer to the soil as dirt, he would correct them and say, ‘Dirt is what you sweep off the kitchen floor; soil is what you grow food in.’” Dave is full of wisdom like that and obviously, his mom was too. It comes down to respect. If we respect the soil, we are in a very real sense saying that we understand how interconnected life is—not only for us today, but for those who came before us and those still to come.

Organic farming is at its core a statement of RESPECT. Organic farming stands against a tide of easy, cheap and government subsidized food production that disrespects the soil and our health. Sure, it is easier to kill every good and bad pest, bacteria and fungi, and treat the soil like a sterile medium, but that is so short sighted. Nature always makes a comeback, but with more ferocity and determination. And our response to this natural correction by nature? Stronger chemicals and more toxic chemistry! For the most part since WWII, we have turned our attention to killing Nature to grow food. Why?!

That is a good question for another newsletter, but essentially, we don’t believe that health starts with the SOIL! Without soil, every culture has diminished or died out. We have this gift, a life changing, life sustaining gift—the Soil. The Soil is foundational to health. Change your food, change your life. It works both ways. Live on processed foods and that will change your life. Live on Organic produce, legumes, grains, nuts, proteins (and in that order) and that will change your life.

The health of the soil and our health is inextricably interconnected. Separate the two and you have what America has today—a health crisis. I am passionate about your health and my soil’s health. What we eat does matter! Organic is better for you and for the soil. And thankfully, we still get to pick what food system we support. Thank you for choosing the organic food system.

 

Tristan Klesick

Health Advocate, Farmer, and Small Business Owner for the last 20 years

 

Posted on by

Connecting

All business is about connecting consumers with products or services that they need. It is as old as time. Commerce is its official name, but really it is helping you get what you want or need the moment it is desired. Pretty simple.

Of course, there are a whole lot of details in between all those steps, but the concept is simple – make the connections. That is what we have been doing for the last 20 years – making connections.

We didn’t start out with a goal to deliver 700,000 boxes of good food back in 1998, but that is what happened as we connected local farm families with local families. We figured out a way to help you eat healthier and get fresher produce to you.

Before Joelle and I ventured into business for ourselves, we were living in Vancouver WA and I was working at a specialty produce store- 1994. It was here that I learned about produce, how to take care of it, what was in season and when. It was also the place where I met my first organic farmers. Back then I had no land and no knowledge about farming, but I had gotten the bug and started my first vegetable garden –32 sq. ft.

Fast forward to 1998 and we had a whopping ½ acre to farm and a fledgling home delivery service. A few years later we were farming 2 acres and 3 years later we moved to Stanwood and started farming 23 acres. In a few more years we started farming another 15. Crazy! Most small businesses are busy with one venture. Not us, we did two – a farm and home delivery! But we wanted to farm, and home delivery seemed like the right avenue to sell our produce to local families like you.

But we do more than farm. We also source organic produce from our neighbors and other organic farms. Remember, I was a former produce person and so I combined my love of working with fresh produce and our family desire to be an organic farm and Voila – a box of good food ends up on your door every week out of the year.

It has always been about organic and getting you the freshest organic produce available. We are your connection to the organic farming world and some of those relationships go back before Joelle and I started Klesick Family Farm – 24 years to be exact.

It is such a privilege to serve you and your families by connecting the organic farm community with you. It is at the heart of what we do best!

 

Tristan Klesick

Health Advocate, Farmer, and Small business owner for the last 20 years.

 

 

#Celebrate20

To celebrate our 20 years of delivering farm fresh fruit and vegetables, we have a special offer for our existing customers and your friends.

 Between March 1 and March 20th (20 days) we are going to be giving you a $20 credit on your account for each friend that signs up for weekly or every other week delivery.

If 5 friends sign up you will get $100 credit, 10 friends $200 credit. We will apply your credits immediately to your account and your friends will get their $20

New customer credit spread over their first 4 deliveries ($5/delivery).

Let your friends know that now is the time to sign up and remind them to mention your name in the referral box so you can get your $20 credit.

Thank you in advance for telling your friends about Klesick’s Box of Good.

 

 

Posted on by

20 Years: 1998-2018

It is hard to believe that it was back in 1998 that Klesick Farms first opened its doors. That was a long time ago! Since the first day of business our family has been providing and delivering organically grown produce. Our mission has always been your health and organic fruits and vegetables. And it has been a very rewarding run.

The Klesick family is a first-generation farm family. We wanted to farm and found a way to do it. We did it because of customers like you that wanted organically grown farm fresh produce delivered directly to your home. In 1998 home delivery was original, novel, and definitely “outside-the-box” type of thinking. In fact, when we started you were lucky to have dial up (my grandparents still had a “party” line), you couldn’t GOOGLE anything, and copiers were the size of a Ford Fiesta. To place an order for fresh produce you had to call the office or email us. You can still call or email us, but now you can also text, IM, DM or PM and we will get back to you!

Facebook what was that??? Instagram, Snapchat or Pandora, Spotify and Hulu. I thought Hulu hoops (wink) were something you rotated around your hips in P.E. class. I was never very good at that!

A lot has changed, but a few things still remain the same—we still deliver organically grown fruits and vegetables to local families and we still answer our phones.

Here is a fun fact. Since our first week of 50 home deliveries of fresh organically grown fruits and vegetables in 1998 we have delivered over 700,000 boxes of good food. That is amazing! That is over 2 million apples, 600,000 bunches of carrots and thousands of strawberries, blueberries, cherries etc. Farm fresh produce delivered to one family at a time over 20 years has had a huge impact on our communities’ health, your health and has blessed a lot of organic farm families.

#Celebrate20

To celebrate our 20 years of delivering farm fresh fruit and vegetables, we have a special offer for our existing customers and your friends. Between March 1 and March 20th (20 days) we are going to be giving you a $20 credit on your account for each friend that signs up for weekly or every other week delivery. If 5 friends sign up you will get $100 credit, 10 friends $200 credit. We will apply your credits immediately to your account and your friends will get their $20 new customer credit spread over their first 4 deliveries ($5/delivery).

Let your friends know that now is the time to sign up and remind them to mention your name in the referral box so you can get your $20 credit. Have them use the coupon code: CELEBRATE20 to redeem their gift.

 

Thank you for making 20 years of Klesick’s a reality and thank you in advance for telling your friends about Klesick’s Box of Good!

 

Tristan Klesick

Health Advocate, Farmer, and Small business owner for the last 20 years.

 

 

Posted on by

#LoveLocal

I love that title #lovelocal! It resonates deeply with who Klesick’s is and why we do what we do. We are passionate about healthy communities and that starts with a healthy family—one delivery, one meal, one bite at a time. And going deeper, for our communities to be healthy we need local farmers and purveyors of healthy food, and we need our local natural resources to be as healthy as possible: healthy farmlands, rivers, estuaries, mountains, valleys and clean air. The whole package needs to be healthy to have healthy communities. 

As a local business owner and local farmer, I am blessed to be able to work on the entire healthy community spectrum. When I am not writing a newsletter or planning your menus, you might find me at my farm. It is pruning and planning season. Or you might find me at a salmon/agricultural meeting trying to strike a balance for food and habitat. Or you might find me working to get more organic food into the local food banks and kitchens that serve the “hungry”.  

We are just a small company, a dozen employees, but we can be a part of the solution to help families get real nutrition through the food bank system. I need your help to take a bigger bite out of hunger. 

  1. Just being a Klesick’s customer helps provide the infrastructure to serve local food banks. How? 
  2. Because we have customers, we have food and we generate #2 quality produce that we sort and save for food banks.
  3. And since we are a delivery company too, we can deliver this food to local food banks. 
  4. This week we are adding our first school backpack outreach program. Super excited! As a part of the Providence Live Healthy 2020 campaign I was able to connect with the Edmonds School District’s Nourishing Network. Currently they are serving 145+ students in 23 schools weekly and they would like to receive organic produce for these students.  
  5. We also offer our Neighbor Helping Neighbor program as an additional item you can purchase. You can actually purchase #1 quality produce, the same quality we send you, to send to a local food bank at a discounted price. You can even specify which food bank.  
  6. Here is our current list: Anacortes, Arlington, Camano Island, Everett & Everett Recovery Café, Marysville, Monroe, Mountlake Terrace, Oak Harbor, Snohomish, and Stanwood. We deliver to 10!  
  7. These 10Food banks are open for serving the less fortunate at the time we deliver to these communities. 

If you would like to join Klesick’s on taking a bigger bite out of hunger at the local level, you can purchase a Neighbor Helping Neighbor box at the discounted price of $28 by clicking on any of the hyperlinked communities mentioned above. You can order a weekly, or every other week or monthly Neighbor Helping Neighbor box and we will do the rest. And to top it off, for every Neighbor Helping Neighbor box you purchase, we will send you a yearend tax donation receipt. 

This year we are celebrating 20 years of farming and delivering good food—more to come on that. In the last 20 years with your help, Klesick’s has delivered over 11,000 boxes of good food to local food banks! That is amazing and humbling all at the same time. Klesick’s (you and us) have made a difference in the lives of local families—one family, one delivery, one bite at a time. The need is still great. Please consider adding a Neighbor Helping Neighbor Box and help take a bite out of local hunger. 

 

Thank you,  

Health advocate and farmer, 

Tristan 

Posted on by

Change is a Good Thing

The biggest factor in losing weight probably has more to do with what you eat than any other factor. I just got back from the gym and burned 200 calories in an hour. In effect I burned a 16 oz. Grande from the coffee stand! That is a pretty steep price for an hour of my life. And how many of us are hitting the gym to burn a latte every day?

The resting or basal rate of metabolism is how most of our calories are burned–70-80% of a 2000 calorie diet for a woman or 2500 for a man. These are the calories burned by thinking, by cell divisions and processes. Hence it is referred to as resting metabolism. Another 10-15% is tied to digestion, just processing what we ate. And the last 10-20% is tied to movement of some sort. For sure, exercise is a part of it, but so is vacuuming, walking, or answering the phone. Of course, there are always a few outliers, and you can massage the percentages a few here or there, but most of us fall into these categories. 

I pick up my kiddos from school a few times a week, and the size of middle schoolers ranges from skinny to “normal” to heavy. American kiddos are trending towards heavier, much like the adult population. The trend towards heavier is not a good trend. What is the solution? Have the kids exercise, make them run around a track??? Yes, it is important to get their heart rate up and get fitter, but to reverse the heavier trend for American kiddos (and, dare I say adults) it would make more sense to change what they eat while they are at school rather than hope that exercise will solve the dilemma. 

If it is accurate to say that we burn roughly 70% of our calories doing nothing physical, it would stand to reason the biggest gains in losing weight will probably come from eating less and not from exercising more. But eating less is only a part of the solution. We also need to eat the right kinds of foods and eat them in the right quantities. This is not a popular opinion in the food manufacturing world or with their congressional lobbyists. Their mantra is: All calories are equal. If you are overweight, that is your problem–exercise more. 

That thinking gets under my skin! America has a calorie problem–too many and the wrong kinds! If we want to win with food and win on the scale and win at the doctor’s office, we will have to eat fewer calories and better calories. Of course, that would put a serious dent in Coca Cola or Pepsi or Nabisco or Hershey’s or Starbucks profits, but I don’t care and for this father, farmer and health advocate that would be fine by me. 

Turns out your Mom was right. Eat your vegetables, just don’t boil them to death (please). Eating more vegetables, fruits, quality proteins and fats would go a long way towards reversing the American health crisis. As usual the solutions are simple, but the commitment to changing is where the rubber meets the road. Change is up to us. 

Klesick’s is here to support your healthy food choices.

 

Health Advocate and Farmer,

Tristan